O. B. E. ...open bottle exposure.

@paddockjudge Talisker 10, in my experience, does not like to linger too long in the opened bottle. Other than some loss of punch in big peaters over time, I have not noticed much deterioration over periods of up to a couple of years. I have been nursing a bottle of Glenmo Sonnalta PX for several years and, to my taste buds, it is unchanged. I think big sherry lasts better than big peat.

@paddockjudge Certain bottles definitely change over time. Benromach 10 and Springbank 10 come to mind. Neither were better or worse after several months, but they were certainly different.

@BlueNote I totally agree with you, but there is exception. I find that whisky with a blackcurrant bud note does not fly well.

Usually, I find that rye is improving with air exposure becoming more floral. I also find that Scotch with a virgin oak finish will often build a banana flavor.

@Robert99 I can't say I have ever encountered a blackcurrant bud note in Scotch whisky, but then I am not very good at picking out specific flavours. Can you tell me where you have noticed that particular flavour?

@BlueNote Most Bowmore present this note. I also encounter that note with some Young Arran. I am ok with this flavor when it is weak and in the background but can't stand it when it is dominating.

@Robert99 Thank you. Now that you have told me I will be on the lookout for it. Cheers.

@Robert99 I think it's more the 12, 15 and 18 and weaker Bowmores you seemed to find this, if I recall. I don't think you'll find this in the Tempests or Laimrig.

@Nozinan Not on the Laimrig but I did get it with one Tempest.

@Robert99 That so? I will have to at some point open one and see if I can get it. Not that I dislike black currents, but I don't recall noticing. It would be best if we tasted it together...

@Nozinan As you know, I use to be a wine fanatic, that is why I have Le Nez du Vin. It's a box with 64 little bottles containing oil with specific scent that you can pick in wine. There is also a box for the whisky but with less bottles in it. Anyway, maybe I will bring it next time we have a tasting together, it may help us to create a common lexicus.

@Robert99 That would be absolutely awesome.

@Nozinan I was referring to black currant buds. This is not like the fruit, it has a big vegetal note that is a bit like the first layers of a twig, one with a hint of a bark over a green layer at the end of which you do find the bud. It is a flavor wine experts refer to sometime.

@Nozinan About Le Nez, it's a done deal.

@Robert99, I too come from a wine based background. My family made hundreds of gallons of wine every autumn. While I enjoy the effects of oak upon whisky, I am not fond of oak in wine. Call me a purest, but my greatest enjoyment when drinking wine comes from the magnificence of the grape, unmasked, liberated from influence of oak and unaltered by hybrid yeast. The only time wine should come in contact with wood is when it is fermenting in a wooden barrel with indigenous air-borne yeast. How's that for a radical statement!?

@paddockjudge I disagree.... If the wine is distilled I am very happy for it to spend time with oak...

@Nozinan, Evolution...John K Hall, the creator of evolution.

@Robert99 is this the cursed Bowmore FWP you refer to?

And I am not only a believer that a bottle changes over time after exposure to air, I have evidence on the autopsy table.

@Frost I don't think the conversation was about how the bottle changes the LIVER over time...

@paddockjudge Like you, I don't like my wine to be oaky. That is why I consider the French to still be the best in the world and your statement was not radical it was making sense.

@Frost Could you elaborate about that curse, I never heard ot it.

I won't go so far as to call myself a skeptic, but I really don't understand why whisky should deteriorate (or at least, change significantly) in a matter of weeks or months in an "open" bottle that has a tight-fitting cork, when it sits in a breathing cask for years and just keeps maturing.

Put another way: Why should peaty whisky stay brisk & bracing for a decade in a breathing barrel, and then lose its initial edge after a week of opening the bottle?

I've asked this question elsewhere and never gotten a good answer. Is time spent in a breathing cask just a net gain, where the benefits of wood exposure outpace the degradations of air exposure? If not that, then what the heck is going on here?

(Also, it should be noted for anyone reading about this stuff here for the first time, that "OBE" in the world of whisky usually mean "old bottle effect," and is a phenomenon ascribed to changes in whisky in a closed, sealed bottle over a very long time, like decades. It's a common theme in reviews of very old auction and "attic find" bottles, like you might see on WhiskyFun.)

@MadSingleMalt I'm no scientician, but I think the cask giveth more than the cask taketh away. An open bottle allows oxygen to come into contact with the whisky and the bottle giveth nothing to the whisky. Just a guess.

@OdysseusUnbound , your take on things reminded me of something that just adds to my question: I bet we've all seen those depictions of whisky in a long-aged barrel, where after (say) 20 years the whisky contents are down to (say) half the barrel volume. The rest, of course, is all air.

So isn't that old whisky getting a huge dose of air exposure during all those years of maturation? Seems like way more than you get from cracking open the bottle.

@MadSingleMalt But again, you'd have the wood giving its sugars, vanillins, sherry flavours etc. And at approximately 1 to 1.5% per year, it's not THAT much air exposure. Again, I'm just guessing. The glass bottle adds absolutely nothing as far as flavour goes, while the air would interact with the volatile contents of the bottle. At least, that's my gut feeling.

@MadSingleMalt There is many assumption in your comment. We are not always talking about weeks when we are talking about air exposure. It could be months or years before a change occure. This change can be good or bad, so air exposure is not necessarly source of a decay.

If it's true that a bottle has a tight-fitting cork, it is also true that new air will get in the bottle with each pour. Contrary to a close cask where some equilibrium will prevent new air to rush in, a bottle expose the whisky to fresh oxygen every time you attend to it.

We also have to consider that some changes are the simple effect of evaporation. In a terrible simplification I would say that whisky has light spirits and heavy spirits and of course the light spirits evaporate at a faster pace than the heavier spirits changing the balance between the two. I think that peat flavors are probably carried by light spirits and could be affected that way.

My last point will be to not underestimate the complexity of the chemical reactions ongoing in a whisky. Even professional will tell you they don't understand or know all the reactions that create the flavor or its evolution. I know as a fact that I had some whiskies that were stable for months and then change in a few weeks. Is there a catalyst reaction involves? I don't know and would welcome an answer from a qualified authority.

Seems to me that with cask aging that you are talking about heavily filtered and wood influenced air, whereas once you open a bottle and pour some out the fully oxygenated atmospheric air takes its place. I don't know the biochemical and biophysical specifics, but I assume that this is the root of the differences in the effects obtained.

On the other hand, periodic sampling from the aging casks would seem to of necessity introduce some fully oxygenated air into the barrels too.

Somebody can probably get a Ph.d dissertation out of answering this question.

Random illustration from the internet showing how much air can be inside a barrel after a good number of years:

Yes, and that diagram is obviously for slow-maturation whisky like Scotch. That diagram displays the low-end for air in the barrel after a given number of years.

@MadSingleMalt But are there diagrams showing the Angel's Share of NAS scotch? Age doesn't matter with those, so how does the evaporation work? If they're "beyond age statements", are they "beyond" evaporation too?

@MadSingleMalt I also agree with your statement earlier. "I won't go so far as to call myself a skeptic, but I really don't understand why whisky should deteriorate (or at least, change significantly) in a matter of weeks or months in an "open" bottle that has a tight-fitting cork, when it sits in a breathing cask for years and just keeps maturing." I too have experienced both positive and negative changes in a single bottle of different single malt scotch over a period of weeks. But, as you outlined, I'm unsure quite how or why this would occur. That being said, some chaps on here opened my eyes to the phenomena where by whiskey aged under certain specific conditions can actually increase in ABV rather than decrease as is expected. That still messes with what seems logical to me but hey. I just love the complexities of this amazing stuff we call whisky. By the way, I love some oak influence in my big red wines (Syrah / Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon.....).